THE CONCEPT OF APPROACHES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES, IN PARTICULAR PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

THE CONCEPT OF APPROACHES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES, IN PARTICULAR PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

DR S.B.M. MARUME

MR. R.R. JUBENKANDA

MR. C.W. NAMUSI

Arnold Brecht (1967:57), one of the leading 20th century-political scientist, maintains that clarity and
unambiguity of all terms and concepts used in a study are the first requirements of logical reasoning. It is
against this background that the three academics have decided to examine systematically the concept of
approaches which has been erroneously used interchangeably and synonymously with the concept of methods in
the social sciences, for example, sociology, economics, political science, business administration, strategic
management, international politics, strategic studies, psychology, and so on. The purpose of this article is to
demonstrate that (a) methods and approaches are two different terms with different meanings and (b) different
classifications of the concept approaches in the social sciences

IOSR Journal of Business and Management (IOSR-JBM

2016